TWIG #333: Apple's Stand Up Comedy, Fortnite Mobile's Tea Leaves, and a Mystery Success

[Music] Game devs, here at Heroic Labs, we know that great gameplay is what players love. But integrating metagame features like challenges, progression, and rewards is crucial for retention and monetization. But coding them is a tedious and timeconuming process. That's why top studios have turned to Hero from Heroic Clouds. Hero provides a complete suite of battle tested metagame features that are quick to implement, letting you spend more time on the core gameplay experience. Ready to ship fully featured engaging games? Check out Hero today at heroiclabs.com. Want to know what's really driving your game's growth? Appsflyer gives you the insights you need to scale smarter. From user acquisition to in-game engagement, their industry-leading attribution and analytics tools help you make datadriven decisions that win. Appsfire. Because every tap tells a story. Hey, are you building a game, launching an app, or

considering an acquisition? Well, in that case, Deconstructive Fund Consulting is here to help you out. We do everything from market research to go to market strategies to live ops optimization and due diligence. We're trusted by some of the most beloved game development companies, makers of tools and tech, as well as some of the most renowned investors. Now, if you are building, launching or buying, don't do it alone. Do it with us. Connect by emailing to consulting at [Music] theconstructorof.com. Hello everyone and welcome to this week in games 333 where we have game industry news by game industry insiders. Hi everyone, I'm Jen Donho. I fold the marketing and publishing role on the podcast. Today we have Phil Black Mandization ZAR Eric Crest screaming at the clouds louder than usual and Adam Teler product just

product. I always like that I'm last on the list too, right? Just last. I'll I'll put you first next time. Thank you. Please switch up the order. We We have a template and we just cut and paste every week. Let's not end on a low note every time. Yeah. All right. Here's what we have going on this week. I missed last week and so I have a lot to yell about. Chris, I'm channeling you every time you miss a week and you come back and you yell at us. So, Apple is rumored to announce a dedicated game app replacing or updating Game Center. They're announcing this at WWDC coming up. So, this is early rumor news. Ubisoft execs have to testify in the sexual harassment trials from the cases that were back in 2020. Huge game update. The shooter guys are here. So, top steam game shooters. They're going to go through all of the latest on there. And then grow a garden. This is a Roblox game by a teenager that beats everything with a 8.9 million CCU,

I think, because they had an event. I don't know if they're still there, but that was what they peaked at, beating like every other game on the planet. So, it's crazy. A teenager made a farming game on Roblox, beats everything. All right, so first is a lot of AI news. Adam, tell us about your favorite AI news this week coming out of Google IO. Yeah, have you guys been paying attention to this? The Google IO output has been pretty impressive. So, especially the V3 and all the video stuff. So, there is that like if you remember a while ago, there was the chat GPT40 moment where everybody went online and pasted themselves as Studio Gibli. I have now my image of myself in Cyberpunk 2077 all because of it. So, everybody updated their profile pictures because of that. This V3 moment actually feels very similar where all of a sudden you see all of these incredible posts of like videos that like it cannot be made by amateurs, right? Like just for through simple text prompts, you're getting absolutely incredible videos.

And of course, there's both the AI people that are scared saying like, "Oh my god, this should never happen. We should never do this." And then there's AI Maxis saying like, "Now you can create amazing video game trailers ready for consumers all the way through a text prompt." The output is actually very very impressive. So if you have not seen that, please go check it out. And I think it also has real implications for games in terms of like how we we build some of these types of assets. The other one was the Vader AI moment in Fortnite. What freaking [ __ ] food is that? Darth Vader, tell me. Double down. Freaking [ __ ] vulgarity does not become you. You inquire about like a common thug. It is. I made him swear. All right. So, yeah. Vader AI within Fortnite. That was pretty impressive in terms of like a technology test, an experiment. Of course, you give players a UGC system like this and they will break it. They

forced Vader to swear. They forced Vader to say some pretty inappropriate things. But it was a pretty good test for generative AI in terms of conversations within games. So definitely Lucasfilm is going to be double-checking some of their outputs of these things in the future, but at the same time, this is a pretty big moment for games that I'm pretty sure a lot of games will start integrating similar systems. Derek, is this what it was like when you first discovered the computer? Is this what it was like to experience technology like this? Oh, you're talking about what I said last week. I went to Buudaca's family. This is a contractor wife and we used chat GDP advanced voice mode to translate between like French and English in real time. I had chat GDP make a website for her brother who runs a small business like in real time by scanning his website and automatically creating it and like their mouths just dropped. I mean this must be what it was like to first see the computer and to like show it to people. I mean there's

been so many like transcendental moments and to your point Adam like now it's hit video. Remember the Will Smith spaghetti video that like kind of kicked this all off. That was our first benchmark. Like we couldn't even get Will Smith to eat spaghetti. That's long gone. He's like on his like fifth plate of lasagna by now. You know, it's it's hyper impressive. And I think when you see about the impact in games, like Eric Seer had this piece and I think he's he's right when he measures these in milestones. You've got to think this agentic model is like coming to marketing first that like these whole pipelines are going to be automated, especially now that we have creative video. Like you'd imagine Meta is going to like just scan your stuff and start creating automatically creatives. Like they're going to own more and more of the pipeline with this stuff. I think that's good for everyone, but it's a transcendental moment that we're all a part of. Like wow. Yeah, we've been through I've been through two, right? The PC revolution, the internet revolution, now we're talking about the AI revolution. It's like, and again, I think this is even easier than the PC revolution because the tools themselves are easier to use. immersing yourself as you're saying is the only way of

actually getting really smart on this tech and to do it every day because they would they would ask like how do I use this and my first response to them is have you tried asking chatp how to use it seriously like that's that's technology that actually sells itself right like you can use it to figure out how to use it give me a procon list to using it GDV yep no and to be honest in this market where we are where things are pretty depressing this is the one area where you're just So much promise, so much excitement. Let's lean into this. Let's figure out where it can go. Cool. All right. Doing a little shilling. So last week I was out at MAU, which is a mobile marketing conference. I got to interview Scoply CMO Ben Webbly at the keynote opening. And I didn't quite realize this, but there were probably over a thousand people in the audience. We have a a couple of pictures that some friends sent me. I'm getting the video, so hopefully we'll be able to release that shortly. Ben was amazing and told lots of great stories. We're

going to get to that soon, but okay, fine. A quick story just for Mr. Crest. Six months after the November TV campaign that they ran, which had Chris Pratt, Jason Mamoa, Kiki Palmer, nine of their 10 top UA creatives are from that campaign and are still like ROI positive. They're driving all of their UA revenue. So, one of his points was besides the fact that they developed a model that had downfunnel KPIs that the campaign was driving, the creative from the TV campaign and the brand campaign actually helped lift and give life to their UA campaign. So, more on that to come, sir. I know you love it. I know you love this. First of all, I've actually made this point. I think the creative is amazing for both campaigns for that matter. But the campaign itself was not ROA positive, right, of the TV spend, you know, but how do you know that? Like we don't have their number. They have a web shop, my friend. It doesn't matter. It does not matter. It

does not matter. The revenue is down and to the right since the TV campaign. So like you can't make an argument that it's propping things up from the outsider. Whatever. It doesn't matter. It's like it is what it is. It's not increasing because TV is a last ditch effort. It's stupid. It's just dumb. It is an effort that comes at the end when you do have your UA saturation. Yes. You know, happening. And he does admit that that is what they, you know, that's the entire purpose. You launch and run with your UA because that's what's working and you can track it and and then you use the brand campaign to help you know what we talked about before, which is finding ways to drive awareness. there. You can reduce some of your CPIs and your acquisition costs. You find new audiences. You help re-engage folks, get people back into it. But he can't do it because he knows that this is not ROI positive. They know that the revenue is down to the right. Like I haven't seen the presentation, but the fact that you're throwing out these [ __ ] like, you know, anecdotes as opposed to actual real numbers that I know he's not saying

it because it's not true. That's the problem, right? And and moving on. It's like It is difficult when we do not have all of the data. Censor Tower is lovely and we love them, but we don't have all the data. Again, my point is he has all the data and he's not saying what he needs to say to prove that this TV campaign has been value ad to the product, right? Period. So, tell him to come out with data that actually can show and articulate how well this thing is done. He will not do it because it isn't. That's what I'm saying. All right. He has a model and they're not going to come out publicly and share everything about their model. Their model, their model says it worked. All right, fine. All right, we'll keep going. All right, my next shill off thereord event in LA on June 10th. So, this is us partnering with Neil for mobilegamer.biz. Sadly, we are over capacity at this point. We are doing executive roundts and most of the LA and San Francisco mobile game

companies are coming. Crest, Laura, and I will be there. Adam is in town but is too busy to come to the All of us have to work. Yes. I would call work. Yeah. Why do you have parties in the middle of the day? It's not a party. It's like this looks like a party. It's like a bunch of like people coming together from all of the major companies that you know, Google Play, all different people are going to be there learning from each other, sharing things off the record so that you can actually learn from other folks. That's okay. That's okay, Adam. You're very busy. I get it. Some of those sponsors include Media Bodies, Influencer Agency, and Apps Flyier. Google Play is hosting at their Venice office. So, more sponsors to come. Okay, Crest, you want to do your TV campaign. First correction, I totally forgot about this, but I'm going to try to do this. So, I said last week that both Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan should be ashamed of themselves and should give back half of the fees they made. I was incorrect in this assessment. Goldman Sachs who sold Zinga should get a full [ __ ] 100% of

the money that they got from that transaction because they sold a piece of [ __ ] to take two. JP Morgan on the other hand should [ __ ] give back half their fees because they did a fairness opinion saying that that deal was fair and yet they've written down 50% of the goddamn transaction two years after the transaction. So I want to be clear on that point. Goldman Sachs, they're [ __ ] rock stars, dude. If you want to sell your company for the peak dollar, even if it's not worth it, go to Goldman. They know how to do that. They sell iceos. All right, moving on. Another update from Dream. 10 million incremental downloads. Woohoo. Like, they're worth [ __ ] nothing, but they have 10 million incremental downloads. 400% increase from the trailing 41 days. Amazing. Absolutely amazing performance. But downloads don't mean [ __ ] in mobile, as we all know. It's just a vanity metric. 60% increase in revenue, which sounds like a lot, but it's [ __ ] not. It's $8 million, which is mice nuts for any type of game for that matter. They

could have done this much more efficiently if they had just done UA the oldfashioned way. So, that is a 13% rorowaz assuming a $60 million budget because they're still paying for stupid TV ads and that's still going on. and the amazing creative they're using for UA. I looked at the UA charts. They're off the chain. Yo, they're using all this great assets for UA, which is by a far better use than spending it on [ __ ] TV. More power to them. And I am sure, absolutely certain they will scale this game and it'll be very profitable and good for them long term. But this TV campaign is gosh darn stupid. So, stop TV for mobile. Period. Done. I just I just can't anymore. And by the way, I guess I should say is the incrementality there is probably not even the proper incrementality because you're just doing pre-post, right? Right. So I'm giving Yeah. Well, yeah. All right. I'm giving him more benefit, right? Not less. Exactly. I know. I'm trying to be fair here, you know, with

the data that we have. I know. And I would love Dream to come back and say, "Oh, well, look at what this has done for us. The $8 million." Do you know what they're going to send you? signed LeBron basketball. That's what they're going to send you. And they're going to say, "Suck it." From there, it's like that's what they're going to send you. All right. So, I want to do a conversation since I missed last week. So, I had three things. Number one on Netflix. So, they announced the Clash of Clans TV show. You guys were wondering about the timing. The timing is because of licensing show. So, licensing show is, ironically, it happened to be about the same time as MAU. So, I got to see all of my Disney friends that were there, all of the licensing show people. So, I got a little bit of a download of like what was being announced. If you don't know, all of the major studios go and they show their slate of films and IP, the video game companies go and and do the same thing. The show is for the people that make toys or t-shirts or mugs or whatever to go and figure out what they want to go license to make

their next, you know, range of products on. So, that's the purpose of licensing show that was happening. That's why the announcement happened for me. I think Netflix and Supercell picked the wrong IP. It should have been Brawl Stars all day long. I don't know why they picked Clash of Clans. Everything is firing on all cylinders for Clash Royale. I've worked on every single boy IP under the sun. Star Wars, Batman, Transformers, Power Rangers, Toy. I don't know. I think I'm picking a winner on that one. Supercell, you should. So, why not YouTube? Why? Why not just go to YouTube? Screw Netflix. Go YouTube. Maximize your views. MAU. They get paid. I don't think you want to gate this. This is a marketing vehicle, Jen. All on board. You got to get all those kids that are like watching. What is it? Lululemon, cuckoo, all the Lulu. Coco Melon. Come on. Cocoon kid. You got to Oh my god. You got to fumble around. Why not get all that uplift? Why put this behind a pay gate? Just make it a marketing vehicle. Make it what it is. Sell some

merch. Sell some hats. You can You can do that. I'm sure they wanted the cache of Netflix. Netflix probably paid them more than it would be for them to go. They got to be out of pocket if you're smells of attitude. This is like we're too good for YouTube. Probably. I do think that they tried this in the past. I'd have to look it up. Yeah. I mean, they've already done YouTube shorts. They've already built the marketing channel. This is what I don't understand. Well, it's risk, right? So, if Netflix signs up, they pay for it. They market it. Otherwise, Supercell has to fund it on all accounts. They have to fund the show. They have to fund the marketing for the show. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. I buy that. I buy that. That's kind of why it's Take the subsidy check. Yes. All right. So, number two is don't listen to Ethan about him doing all his marketing with AI. Shut the [ __ ] up, Ethan. Had to get that one in there for you, Crest. Okay. Number three is Mr. Crest, I want to argue with you over this. I do think that you were a little harsh on Apple for your diet tribe, which I'm

paraphrasing. It was something like Apple deserves credit, but they abused developers from the beginning. They're bullies and they're doing very little to justify the 30% ongoing fee, which I don't necessarily, by the way, disagree with most of that, especially the AT part right away. So what I am thinking about is that in the old days, you know, you and I both used to ship discs to retail. Retail takes 30%. Now the 30% that they take was off of, you know, what a consumer pays. They're paying, you know, 60 bucks. So they take that margin and then the developer also has to pay first party, which is another 30% that goes to, you know, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo. So there are all of these kind of built-in fees plus I think you had to pay an additional fee for the Nintendo cartridge or the CDs. So that so that was like the first thing. The second thing is when you listen to like podcast with Mark Beni off who is a Salesforce CEO, he actually has really fun stories about like the birth of the app store

cuz Steve Jobs used to talk to him. So Steve Jobs came up with this 30% fee basically because you know he looked at retail and was like hey they do it I should do it too. And by the way, Ben off actually gifted the appstore.com to Steve Jobs. It's kind of a fun story. That's where he got the origin of that. He just took what retailers did and slapped it on. And I think you'll have a great point in a second about like the price point there. And then, you know, one other note is um I actually had to work with the folks who were at the birth of mobile who had to deal with mobile carriers. So when you when you downloaded a game from T-Mobile or Verizon or whatever that was. So they used to take 60%. So it was 6040 in the wrong way. That was another one where you then had to like pay them money to be at the front of their store and you know you had to pay them to be automatically downloaded as part of the phone. So in hindsight you know yeah you plebs should be happy you know 30% you plebs should be smiling and kissing my

feet. I am I am just saying there are some other situations that were really bad. Crust might have been a little bit harsh on Apple for a decade of being. Do you remember do you remember web apps, Jen? Did you live through web apps? Remember Steve Job getting a straight face saying we're we're not doing apps. We're going to do this the web. All right. So the way I remember this and anybody out there correct me if I'm wrong here is that the way they justified the 30% is it's actually a 20% fee for retail, not 30. It's 20% across the board for games and then they added 10% for the backend and all the tech side. So they're not only a a seller but they're also a hosting as well. So they increased it from 20 to 30. Yes, this is what Apple's justification of that 30%. And it was basically assuming that everything was going to be a premium game, right? Which clearly was not the case. So when you do have business models where it's like dollar to$5 transactions, it kind of actually makes sense to be at 30%. But when you're doing hundreds of millions of dollars of

[ __ ] inapp purchase [ __ ] which has nothing to do with Apple because they're doing [ __ ] all to help facilitate that, then they don't deserve jack [ __ ] They are getting sued by every country in the free world because they are acting in the way that they are, right? So it's universally accepted that they do not deserve the 30% fee and have monopolistic tendencies. So, it's not just me saying this and the and the actions over the last like decade or 12 years since the iPhone came out. It's kind of all the countries in the free world and all the governments that are coming after them for this almost the same exact reason. So, I feel like I'm on the right the side of history on this one and I've been on this crusade since I was at Kabam, you know, like we're talking about this [ __ ] right? I'm just saying you were like calling them bullies for the last decade. So just just just giving some other context to the whole thing. And by the way, like I like I said, they have a new I guess game center 2.0. So Apple plans to get ready. Is this twig episode

two years ago? 12 years ago. We're like, what the [ __ ] is with game center? Why can't you guys make it better? Make a tool for everybody to help facilitate this point. Build a friend. It's too late. It's too late. Let me do the context. You can yell at them. All right. Cheap points. Apple plans to announce a dedicated gaming hub that replaces or updates Game Center. Unsure. And by the way, it's dedicated. So, it is a separate app than the App Store. Apparently, this is all rumored, but you know how it goes. So, this is for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV. And this is going to come out at WWDC next week. It's a dedicated app. People say it's similar to the Xbox app for iPhone. Not sure that's a good thing, by the way. It will let you launch games you've installed on your devices and serve as a hub for things like achievements and leaderboards. They can have loyalty points in there. This comes alongside the next version of iOS this September. Why do we need a launcher on my phone?

My phone is the launcher. You don't want to go to another page? I'll go to another page. Really cool. Open up. This is really cool display though, man. It's going to be like tiles. This is a strategy that was written by [ __ ] lawyers, okay? Like, this is nothing to do with actually being a product that [ __ ] consumers want. This is about covering their ass and providing some type of value prop for the 30% which they haven't done for the last 12 years. This is actually proof of what I'm trying to say. Like, Game Center was actually useful at the very beginning, right? And then there was a lot of things that replaced it like Open Faint and other other technologies in the back end, right? But they [ __ ] [ __ ] it up and they they just stopped supporting it completely like on purpose, you know, because it didn't evolve like it didn't compared to like PlayStation and Micros and and Sony and I mean to the far lesser degree Nintendo like they continually update their system to help facilitate building tools and technologies to help do online gameplay and matchmaking whatever and

you know obviously the third parties do a lot of their own tech and [ __ ] but at the end of the day this is a [ __ ] joke right I am curious as to how they actually execute against this. Like I just want to see what they think is contemporary. But at the end of the day, like this is [ __ ] [ __ ] Absolute [ __ ] Too little too late. You know, almost almost laughable in terms of the timing. I mean, well, yeah. I mean, the timing is, you know, they got to defend the 30% or there's better ways to do that than Sure. Yeah. So, they have this pressure. They have the Discord pressure. By the way, I just got a Discord ad for the first time on my desktop today. It was super cool. I had to watch the ad. I think it was for Split Split Splitgate too. Splitgate. Yeah, it was an ad for Splitgate. And after I finished it, the reward was like on my avatar, like a little like avatar frame. It was interesting. Anyway, so Discord is coming. Featuring isn't working. You know, we talk a lot about the challenges of featuring. So, they solve featuring by putting it into another app. I'm just telling you like this. This is Let me

I'm just going down the list of what what's Ken think? What's Jen think? I I Okay, let me I was giving you why I think they're doing it first, then let me get to what I think that anything that they can do to try to help themselves is a good move. However, if this is anything like the tragedy that is Apple Intelligence, I worry for them. I worry that they don't have game- centric people on their team trying to come up with ways to make it better for gamers. And I don't that's not true. Remember today they just announced they made their first game developer acquisition. Oh yeah. The two guys that made the Sasquatch game. It's uh it's a real U-shape over there in the spin on that, dude. Like the coverage is so crazy, dude. They're making movies now. They're making games. I know. It's ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. It's like it's like two a two guy studio who made the Sasquatch game for Apple Arcade. Anyway, I that I think people are are looking way way too much. You

know, Marshon Lynch when he says, "I'm just here so I don't get fined." Just all I can see is Apple up there. Yeah. Moving on to even worse story. So, Ubisoft CEOs to be summoned into court in the Ubisoft harassment case. So, Eve and the human resource director Marie will be summoned to the court on June 2nd to testify in the trial of three former Ubisoft execs accused of sexist and racist behavior. These executives are Serge, Tommy, Francois, and Gulamin Patro, I think is how you pronounce that. The union says beyond the personal responsibility of these three executives, this trial will highlight Ubisoft's responsibility in setting up a system aimed at keeping harassers in place while silencing their victims. All right, so the only reason I'm covering this is like I really want to be clear on this one because I from my sources, this is a total legit grievance. Like I've heard specifically that they kind of just did not handle this well within the company systematically, right?

Unlike the investigation against Bobby Kotek at Activision. So there's the same situation and there's a couple bad actors within these things. The difference was that I think Ubisoft actually downplayed it and and ignored a lot of these complaints, right? And in the Activision case that that was not the case. At least the court found that, right? They found no independent investigation there. no substantiated allegations of systematic sexual harassment and keeping it quiet for CEO Bobby Cotek and that was like kind of that legal case. But in the Ubisoft case, I think they actually will find that and they could get in trouble. However, in these type of cases, it might be the same type of conclusion is that there was no systematic situation. But we'll see and we'll find out. But these guys were [ __ ] terrible supposedly. Like I've been told they were awful to work with. So anyway, we'll see what happens. I've heard similar things and thank you for actually putting this in here. I hope that these types of stories and actions

just remind everyone to stop acting gross. Just it's not needed. So please and thank you for that. On the Ubisoft front, by the way, I totally forgot to mention this. Um Jade Remen again leaving her post as a as the leader of a company. Dude, this woman has not made a game for over a decade, right? Like I think it's been like almost 18 years in which she created a successful game, Assassin's Creed 2, right? Because the only other game she's worked on since Assassin's Creed 2 was Splinter Cell, which failed miserably, right? And so since then, she's been bouncing her ass around all over the place and now she's left her company that she founded, right? So remember she made Motive, EA set up a studio for her when she left Ubisoft and so they had some canceled projects. They also contributed on Star Wars Battlefront. They did the flying mode. Then she bounced off of that I think to Montreal. I mean, she was always on Montreal, but I think she that was when she started the Sony studio and then then now that's never shipped

anything. No, but she was also did a stint at Google. Oh, that's right. There was a Stadia. Stadia. Three projects without solid ship projects. She has not released a game in 20 years, I think, now. Or maybe it's 16. I don't know. But it's crazy. It's crazy. Anyway, it was an extraction shooter, wasn't it, too? Yeah, it was an extractor shooter. Oh god. I've heard that that thing might actually that whole group might get just shut down. So, well, there's actually just some breaking news that EA just shut down the Black Panther game and the studio associated with it as well. Yeah, it just came through a moment ago. Cliffhanger Studios is Dunanzo. Oh, wow. Man, they they don't mind cancing a license. Do you know how expensive it is to cancel a licensed game? Like millions and millions of dollars. You just I thought you could contain costs too on these single player games. But the thing has been development for years. Yeah. I thought that was closer to being done. What's the other one? Don't they have an Iron Man game? Yeah, I thought they had an Iron Man. Oh, and then they have the 1940s Captain. Do they have it? I think

that's someone else. I think that's Amy. All right. I I can't keep track of all those. Oh, wow. So, I wonder if they're out of the Marvel business. What else do they have left at EA with Marvel? They're out of the Star Wars business, right? They canceled one, but they're still working on another, I believe. Okay. All right. Web stores, you see what good looks like, but have you experienced great app charge is the direct to consumer platform that powers over half a billion dollars in transactions each year for top studios. They're not just another vendor. They're backed by Supercell and built by monetization veterans from Moonactive, Plague Tikica, and other industry giants who understand the difference between merely functional and the truly exceptional. What sets them apart? Deeply personalized web stores with custom design offers, industry-leading monetization features, seamless in-game payment integration,

and a robust SDK. While 70% of top grossing games already have web stores, the ones scaling the fastest are doing it with app charge. Ready to transform good into great? Learn more at appcharge.com. Attention app and game developers. Are you ready to unlock the secrets behind the world's top performing apps and games? With Sensor Tower, you get the ultimate competitive edge. Whether it's breaking into new markets, fine-tuning your UA strategies, or boosting monetization. Dive into data like never before. Track global trends across app stores. Analyze market leading inapp purchase and inapp ad strategies and benchmark your performance with realtime insight. The best part, Sensor Tower doesn't just deliver data, it helps you turn it into action. With intuitive tools and expert analysis, it's everything you need to make smarter, faster decisions. Thousands of app and

game studios from indie creators to global giants trust Sensor Tower to help them win. So why not you? Start your free trial today at sensortowwer.com. That is sensortow.com. All right, let's talk games. So, Twig 3 I33 and let's talk about Expedition 33 announced and had 3.3 million units in month one, which is very strong for an outcome, especially for a small team at that $50 price point. It's probably on pace to sell, you know, 67 million units in year one. Also, about half of those units are coming from Steam despite the game being on Game Pass PC on day one. Overall, this game was built by about 30 people. And their mantra there was around creating that core creative team, but it wasn't just created by those 30 people. It also then augmented that through outsourcing and freelancers to create the scale in order to create how how well polished that

game was. Have you guys played it? It's incredible. It's a really good game. I just downloaded today because I on quote unquote free for Xbox Game Pass. Oh. Oh, you did the Xbox Game Pass? Yeah. The combat's really, really interesting. As a turn-based RPG fan, it's a really interesting combat and the story is amazing. Yeah, that's what I keep hearing is the story is amazing, but the other question I get is the price point that it was 50 bucks. Do we think that the success has to do with price point or is it that the mechanics? You know, I someone said to me it's kind of like, you know, Final Fantasy mechanics even better. Like, what do you think, Adam? No, it's not to do with the price point. It's it's to do with the features in the box. Like if this thing was 60 bucks or 70 bucks, it'd still do incredibly well because it's just a really well differentiated product, really knew its market, really strong combat, really strong story, and you could already see the signals of it well before a price point was announced last year in terms of the the growth. So, let's stop

talking about like $50 price point being a barrier. Like, no. What What percentage of these units are actual Game Pass? Are they actual sales? I don't know because none of that is public. What they announced was it was 3.3 million units sold. Units sold, not players. Which means we should take this information and use it to think about Doom: The Dark Age. Exactly. Which go for it. Okay. So, the next story here is Doom: The Dark Age, which critically was a pretty big success, but they announced 3 million players in one week, right? Like we compare that to 3.3 million units from month one, you'd say, "Oh, this is pretty good." But the reality is 2.2 two million of those three million is Game Pass. So, the reality is this thing has sold less than a million units in its opening week and is not likely a very good outcome for Microsoft. It's just another, you know, big IP coming from Bethesda that was actually really wellreceived in this case where Game Pass is just destroyed its value. Phil

is sharing a lovely image that kind of illustrates the bar chart. So here it says players and then in the last story you said units sold. So I wonder if that is actual units sold then not on. So when you're talking about like PlayStation, Steam, and Xbox outside of Game Pass, you can kind of squint and say that's closer to units sold. But obviously the 2.2 million from Game Pass, that's just straight players. Those are people that did not purchase the game. Got it. Right. So my my other question is these brands, right? So you've got Doom, you've got the Call of Duties, you've got these brands that were probably the reason why Microsoft bought these studios or or bought these brands was to boost Game Pass. So in theory, is is this like more destruction of Game Pass? Chris, just queuing you up to go. I just Yeah, I don't know why I'm having this battle out on LinkedIn on this nonsense. I I can't even believe that this is still a debate, right? Game Pass has been an abject failure. like by

all measures according to every single person I talked to that's close to this publishers right and the evidence is there it's so obvious right they didn't scale the subscribers to the 100 million target that they're supposed to get within a year right they're still stuck in the 30s most likely you know bringing all this exclusive games from game pass to PC PlayStation and even the Switch like that's another admission that the model is not working for them because they can't scale subscribers and then to increase the price for the existing subscribers. That was like the nail in the coffin, right? Like you don't increase price if you're trying to attract more of an audience, right? You're there are no incremental subscribers for their service anymore because they are losing this harbor battle in a big way. So all they're doing is trying to milk the hardcore faithful that they have to improve margins. So at the end of the day, the strategy has failed. I don't think this is really up for debate. And I know it's a value prop for some of the consumers out there. I totally get that. But it's just not good for Microsoft and Xbox and it's certainly not good for the industry. And so I guess that's the

point with this Doom thing that I was trying to make is that this is really extractive of the industry. Even with the innovations they've got here wouldn't have really meaningfully grown it, but it still just means like any any stable revenue would you would have given this studio to keep turnurning out these games is just diminishing over time. Yeah. And and part of it is because the perverse incentives of creating content in a subscription model is that you want fast games that you can release on a continual basis, which is completely misaligned with the market in terms of what people are expecting from an engagement perspective. And so they can't broaden out the audience because they're just stuck in this mode of creating this thing as fast as possible to to, you know, feed the subscribers. And so what this will result in is closure of the studio or layoffs most likely. and we should see that within the next 6 12 months based upon this performance. And so anyway, this seems obvious to me. I don't I've never really heard anybody contradict this. And one of the points that was made and I don't know why I thought I wrote this down is

that well what about what was the Call of Duty, you know, impact last year and it was very minimal, you know, according to Ree Elliot is like it was like a 4% increase, you know, for subscribers with their biggest release from Activision, you know, and so that's not helping either, right? And so if a game like that can't help, then nothing's going to help in terms of getting subscribers up. But a 4% increase in subscribers on a game that size, right? And then and how many sales did Call of Duty then lose because of this? Yeah. Well, see, that's the problem, Adam, is that it wasn't even that, right? They didn't even lose enough sales because it would have to be material for it to matter. And it's it's not. I mean, look at this. We're looking at 2 million Game Pass units. And we're saying Game Pass last check-in in 2024 February was 34 million. So you're telling me that's like a sub 10% attach to their MAU? That is pa that is pathetic. You at least got to put this game in front of all your game pad. Give me a 50% attach and at least make this an acquisition funnel or distribution

channel like PS+ is. They can't even do that. It's over. The console war is over. Yeah, the console war is over. What Microsoft needs to do is to basically [ __ ] rip off the band-aid. Spin off Xbox now. Get rid of the [ __ ] subscription [ __ ] for new games. Come up with a better hardware strategy. Get down back to the exclusive software strategy. You know, maybe not all of it like Call of Duty. I think that would be disingenuous with how they pitched it and stuff, but like otherwise this is going to be a death of a thousand cuts and people have to understand that they will die, right? And then we'll be stuck with Sony and Nintendo and have the Japanese control the entire console industry, right? Which is not a good place to be either. You know, it seems pretty obvious to me like that's that's where we're at. But, you know, maybe I'm wrong. It feels like this was their last swing, right? Like, you know, we're going to go get Call of Duty, put it in there. We're going to take these, you know, retro big brands. Although, I'm not a Doom fan, but the theming of this like this kind of went medieval. That's not what I think of

when I think of Doom. So, I wonder if they have a theme mismatch to. But I think that this last swing at all right, we're taking big brands. We're going to shove them in our subscription, try to draw players in that way. If this doesn't work, I don't think there is anything else that they can try, right? Like other than, you know, your favorite thing is doing an an ad tier. They bought Blizzard and Call of Duty like Right. Yeah. That is it. Like that that's the endgame. If it's not working now, it's not working. That's what I'm saying is like that was their Hail Mary. The The only other thing is an ad tier, which I don't know how the hell you do that. Not their like Doom is not their Hail Mary. Let's just call it It isn't. No, no, no. They also don't have a pipeline, right? They don't have a pipeline of anything that intriguing, you know? And then actually GTA coming out next year might actually hurt them because if any, you know, objective consumer says, "Well, I'm going to buy a PlayStation 5 and get GTA because they just have a better game catalog, right? and I can get Call of Duty and everything else that I want to play on the PlayStation. Better device and it's

cheaper. $100 cheaper, right? Like, dude, it's a no-brainer decision for the consumer. Consumers are not morons, right? They know where the value prop is. The people that have loyalty have already purchased the Xbox, right? And they're probably feeling pretty stupid about it, you know? So, I hate to be doom and gloom, but I mean, I just don't see how they can pull themselves out of this unless they get themselves out of Microsoft, you know, and start to compete headtohead. The one other thing that I've seen them do is kind of position Xbox as a service and not as a platform so that when you subscribe you get your game on PC and console. I think they were trying that but the data that I typically see is there in the vin diagram of the overlap of a PC gamer and a console player is not many players are like I'm going to go continue my game on my PC now. Like you you're kind of dedicated to one platform. I you know like on in my past some attach rates I've seen or like crossplatform where like 10 to 15% of players played on

multiple platforms 100%. That's just not the way people consume content. Like the crossplatform it isn't it doesn't make sense to focus in on that segment. Correct. Okay. I'm just trying to like reverse engineer for them like what what other shots on goal do they have left and I I think they've taken all of their shots. Bundle it with Office 365. There you go. Yeah, exactly. There you go, baby. Put it in the right now. That's like the Yeah, the Apple Arcade strategy and we have a trillion MAU. It's like Solitaire is not going to have the Xbox Live on it. When you sign up for co-pilot, you get a subscription. Yeah, exactly. Oh god. Yeah. Anyways, let's move on. Let's move on. Hell Divers 2, they just had a huge update called Heart of Democracy. So, it reached about 163K CCU, which has beat its previous best terms of post-launch spike, which was 150K last December. So, despite post-launch reaching small

player base, as you can see from this image, you know, spike decay, it's now been able to create consistent spikes that are equaling each other, you know, like not decay. It took more content than usual. So, this was like maps, allies, factions, and did some solid quality of life fixes for the player base. And the narrative also built some urgency, which was good. And it's starting to use that Destiny trick of discounting their SKUs right at season start, which is good to see. So, overall, this is good. This is viable for Sony. I think we talked about this quite a bit in the PVE shooter podcast back in the day where we talked about like this being the model of like if you can create good efficient content that's spiking up players on a consistent basis then you're creating that like sustainable spike which you can take advantage of and I still think overall they've got a leaky bucket between these content drops that can be fixed with augmenting with better progression systems but you know you're working off a pretty good baseline. This is good. Another quick hit is on Splitgate 2. They just had their open beta. Splitgate

is the arena shooter with portals that had a big release back in 2021. I think we had an interview podcast with the CEO at some point hopefully. They had about 10 million downloads in its first month, reach about 60k cu and they used that moment to raise 100 million series A and then basically stopped development on the game in 2022. And this is now their relaunch. This is them saying like, "Hey, Splitgate One wasn't a thing. Now we're going to relaunch it as with day two. Here's the open beta. So unfortunately the open beta, you know, this is no invites, struggled to gain traction, reached about 10 to 12k CCU, ranked 58 on Twitch during that beta. The main issues that really pulled them down were technical as well. The beta did have monetization, but that monetization struggled to actually deliver the purchase items. So it was just a number of big technical hurdles to go through those that first initial. And as well like when people got through all those hurdles, the main differentiator being portals actually felt pretty inconsequential. They

actually downplayed the role of portals in the game and so most players just said this is just another arena shooter. Phil, what are you saying? So, if you look at the original Splitgate, they also ran a beta for this, the best I can tell, back in May 2019 ahead of its 2021 October release. And that hit around 10,000 CCU, which is very similar to the number you just mentioned for Splitgate 2's beta. And so, you're telling me that you're shrinking as a share of the market in your second release. I think this is the clearest signal you can get to abandoned ship. I mean, one of the things, Adam, you and I have talked about is how you think about early signals, wish lists, whatever it may be, this to me is an early signal. And if you think about games in this explore, exploit model, which I've been obsessed with, you know, you're trying to search for gold, when do you start doing really strong variations? When do you try to expand your search radius? And then when do you really hone in and like build infrastructure to drill drill drill, baby? And when I look at something like

this, I don't think they found an oil well and I think it's time to move on. Like, how else would you take the signal, Adam? Why would you want to salvage this, right? Isn't it just cleaner to move on? Well, it's too late. This is like right before launch, right? This is not at the moment where they're like exploring the world and seeing what game to make. They've been on this train since 2019, right? It's it's now like they're they are pot committed and unfortunately the signal is they're they're in a pretty big hole if they want to reach the outcome. This is a light speed joint. So, do you think they're just walking to their death? a hundred million dollars. [ __ ] million dollars, dude. Yeah. O, well, like this is another like remember right before Spectre Divide launched and we were talking about this too and we were like the signals here weren't great. The retention wasn't there. Do you still launch anyways, right? Like you're you're just kind of pot committed. And in many of these cases, you can't like if you do that, you lose your opportunity to retain this player base and it's over. like they're in a

really bad spot and unfortunately it becomes a really difficult decision around like do you then hold back, fix the thing and go forward or do you have to go look for a whole another boil rig to dig into, right? Like that's not a simple solution especially because that typically means like that 100 million is long gone now. Their capital is not there. You can't get more. Sucks. All right, what else we got? Really difficult. Fortnite iOS. So yeah, they they relaunched, reached about 150k a day in revenue. Just keep in mind this is US only since that's the only country it's currently available. To put it in context though, way back in August 2020, US only was about 800k to about a million a day versus the 150 that we're seeing now. they were at about 2 million DAU in the in the U just in the US versus their relaunch spiked up to about only about 600K which means generally

like the iOS relaunch has been pretty meh like just not the same volume that we saw back then. Um especially considering that I actually did try to roll out the red carpet with tons of in-game rewards, exclusive cosmetics, big announcements, 20% cash back, yada yada yada free games carried over to mobile. They did what they could to to bring this out, but did not create nearly as much spike. Obviously, we don't have the PC console numbers here in terms of the overall Fortnite size. Fortnite's probably shrunk since it was in 2020, but at the same time, this looks like a pretty small spike considering where they were. Thing that's interesting is we can go back to the Epic V Apple trial. And so, we actually had leaked iOS numbers from that trial. And that's what we're looking at here is one of the leaked slides. And so we can see that their iOS monthly active users were around, let's say, 9 to 10 million. There's some variation based on, you know, what season it is. And if we compare that to what Sensor Tower is reporting right now, it looks like they're a third of the way there if they want to get back

to their former glory days. So maybe around 3 million to 4 million MAU and looking at, you know, maybe 9 9 to 12 as their former glory. That's that's a really big hill to climb. But the other thing is like they couldn't have known the injunction was going to happen at this period. Like I'm sure they're scrambling the marketing jets and I'm just surprised that they haven't had a little bit more like in the chamber ready to go. To give you an example, when Team Fortress 2 went on iOS, remember they launched with the Airbuds. This is like one of the most valuable items on Steam. If you like install TF Team Fortress 2 on your Mac, you got these earbuds. I remember like selling them for like 30 bucks on the the Valve marketplace. I'm just surprised they wouldn't even have like a little cosmetic as like a fun nod. They did have a cosmetic, but was it specific to Apple? It was if you redownloaded the game on iPhone or Android, you got an exclusive skin. But what was what was the skin? When I checked the skin, it was pretty meh from my perspective. But then I read online that like sentiment

for the skin was pretty pretty high. So, who do I really know? But like it looked pretty generic to me. But yeah, they they did roll out the red carpet. did have an exclusive skin. It is not ear pods, but yeah, it still was a thing. Fail to the shadow realm. They're done. Yeah. To to me still like 600k is not nearly what you would expect. This still looks like you should expect a spike and then a slow decay of these like all these iPhone players coming back being excited and then realizing, oh [ __ ] I'd rather just play on PC. I want to watch the DAU, but my expectation is not going to like grow from here. It's going to be more like a spike and then decay. I'm giving a benefit of the doubt on this one. I don't know. For some reason, I just think that they probably are hopefully trying to fix you just you just like Tim now. No, no. I mean, I I I I would play the wait and see on this one. Yeah. Okay. You wait and see. We'll wait and see. We'll wait and see. Next one. Delta Force. So, Delta Force has now passed Marvel Rivals in CCU on Steam

and that's over 6 months from launch. So, if you remember, we chatted back in like December and we made the bet. I think we all picked Delta Force to be the winner. Marvel Rivals obviously stomped them at launch, but CCU wise, over 6 months later, it's now reversed. This is This is all China though, right? What's the percentage like? So, it's very likely all China. I'm also thinking that there's a pretty substantial amount of bots underneath. We've talked about this. remember we always look at this and it's like steadier than any other game we've seen without like the weekend bumps and it's like hm this doesn't seem right it seems funky so when I look underneath the numbers and like look more at the player base sizing it definitely does have more of a regular decay rate but that doesn't pull away from the fact that Delta Force has been a very strongly retaining PC game better than most of the shark fins that we've been seeing there's a reason why you know it hasn't been pulled from the store but yeah the CCU is misleading so it's difficult to really say that. Yeah. But beyond this point now, Delta Force

has launched on mobile and so far it's stabilized at about 500k a day. But DAU is dropping from launch. It's definitely, you know, a spike in stay model. And then when you cut it down to just the US, that's what we're looking at right now. You're now looking at a significantly smaller portion with DAU declining. About 85% of its revenue is coming from China. So this is very much a China based game, right? And so that that that leads me to believe that the PC skew has got to be, you know, maybe it's not 85, maybe it's 70. Yeah. And I'm assuming it's also got a lot off Steam, too, which we just can't capture. Yep. Right. Okay. Cool. All right. Battlefield 6. So, by far the biggest release this year, assuming they get it out this year, will be Battlefield 6, at least incremental from last year. Obviously, Call of Duty is going to be the biggest release. So Battlefield 6 fans are unhappy with the changes to the class system. The core is always bitching about something, right? They gota franchise can never make anybody

happy. But having said that, this is actually a real big departure from the core battlefield, right? Where you have fixed classes of assault, support, engineer, and recon with fixed weapon types, right? And this does make the classes feel unique and act unique on the battlefield. So they have somewhat of a gripe here from the core perspective. So in the new battlefield, the weapons are not restricted by class. So basically the core players are arguing that removing weapon restrictions undermines the identity of the classes and their effect in gameplay. This could lead to unbalanced scenarios. Blah blah blah medics camping with sniper rifles disrupting the team dynamic is what they were saying. So my sense is that this is a very easy reason, right? They're just trying to simplify this [ __ ] so they can charge more money for cosmetics, right? Like they're trying to simplify the monetization by allowing broader usage of the different weapons across the different classes. And that makes it much easier to sell skins. And in some

ways, they're actually creating a system more like obviously like Call of Duty if I were to say, so that it's easy to monetize. It's also easier for progression because you can basically use progressed weapons through the different classes. It simplifies the battle pass. The the challenges are actually tied to the weapon type, not the class type. That means that everyone can participate if they use their weapons what no matter what class they are. And it also creates obviously a simpler system for pipeline for cosmetics. So that's kind of my think. It's actually really smart design from the monetization perspective and could help like boost the longevity of the game, making it easier to progress. But, you know, the core fanboys are always going to complain and in their defense, I do think it's kind of a departure from the historical core nature of this game, but could help them monetize long term. What do you think, Mr. Adam? Teller, Mr. Product or Mr. Phil? Tap and Phil. Phil

Phil was on this game. Yeah, I see. I I worked at, you know, I live in Sweden because of this company. Oh, I had no idea. I I No, I honestly didn't know that you worked on this specific game. No, no, I worked on Battlefield obviously and I I went through I mean, this is like Battlefield therapy is talking about classes. So, Battlefield 2042 did actually move away from this. If you remember, there's a huge controversy as a part of this game. And the debate is always over this operator model that Rainbow Six Siege pioneered where you're kind of like spending this fixed amount every quarter and getting like two characters. It's very easy to sell to players and creates kind of a dependable revenue stream. Although I will say like, you know, cosmetics have outgrown a lot of the character-based monetization that people talk about. Like Riot, for instance, has grown their cosmetics inventory and their revenue share over time. Just easier to stack revenue. The pipeline for operators is slower. Gameplay is a lot slower. But this has always been the debate, you know, whether or not you lock down classes with weapons or whether or not you allow a lot of customization between every single class. I think the monetization region is complete and utter [ __ ] Eric. I'm sorry. No one

cares. No, it doesn't drive that much revenue because what happens is people are still playing one gun. People do not switch classes generally. That's rare. People focus on one class and they focus on one gun. They date when new weapons come out, but ultimately like they have their long run marriage and that's ultimately where they're going to equipped cosmetics to. And changing class restrictions doesn't do a lot to change that equilibria. It doesn't change the meta collection game by as much as you might imagine. That would be really far down on my list of reasons about why I would go ahead and do this. This is totally about whatever they think is best for the core gameplay. That's the only thing that should matter here. Nothing else is that significant. So, I guess the 2042 changed the open class system over time, right? That wasn't the initial launch. Correct. Correct. And so, we had always been asking UXR about this about open classes and when there are people are excited about it. But now, remember they they switched kind of what was locked down and what wasn't. So remember, you had weapons that anyone could use, but if you used a weapon that had an affinity

with your class, you would get like a benefit, right? For instance, you could hold in your breath longer if you were recon. So it still was fairly open, right? But it wasn't open at launch. They opened it up later in order to improve it for both gameplay, but also likely monetization. No, correct. Now, they were still specialists at launch, though. I know, but the weapon systems was open. Correct. Opened. Opened over time. Correct. Okay. So, this is just an extension of what they already fixed, quote unquote, fixed with 2042, which would piss people off that didn't actually play 2042 or didn't continue to play 2042. This is the first time they've actually been exposed to it. Correct. This would be a wakeup call if you skip 2042 and are coming from like Call of Duty or excuse me, Battlefield V. Again, so that was kind of my point. It's a departure from the core Battlefield systems that most people are used to because 2042 came out a long [ __ ] time ago and not many people play it, right? I mean, even though it's a great game, theoretically, I mean, it not theoretically, it is a great game. I mean, Battlefield always moves a lot of units. I think that's what people

forget. It just struggles with long run retention. It's struggle has always been building the service. Like, even 2042 got a lot of exposure. The back catalog sells very well. I'm trying to counter your point about monetization because the only point of making these type of changes, which they already did to 2042 for obvious reasons, and they're extending it to this game, is for retention and monetization, right? Like monetization was never a part of these conversations. No one was directly thinking, "Okay, because we put class restrictions on, people are going to switch weapons more often than they might otherwise switch, which means they're going to buy more cosmetics than they might otherwise buy." That was never one of the motivating reasons for this change, at least internally. Okay. Well, we will see how well they do. I am I'm rooting for Battlefield because I do think it is a great franchise. It seems like they've worked their asses off to make this game successful. So, it looks good. And it looks good. Definitely. All the labs feedback, all the labs leaks that they've got there. Looks like positive sentiment. It's good. It feels like they tried to do more with the community than they ever did in the past, which is always a good sign. Yeah,

modern military always sells well. Like that is one of the best themes you can have. That's the best setting for sure. It's just a question of how long you have to wait till you can go back to it till it's fresh again. Do you want to do this gearbox thing, Chris? Oh, him putting his foot in his mouth again. just yeah I mean just quickly Gearbox you know Randy Pitchford is a character he is a lunatic and he basically got on Twitter talking about the $80 price point for software and said A it's not my call b if you're a real fan you'll find a way to make it happen which is just a really flippant way of pissing people off about cost of gaming these days and then he further justified his stance in a later tweet that he recalled his experience of purchasing Starflight for $80 when 1991 when he was working a minimum wage job. Suck it up and pay for what you love. Oh man. And so at the end of the day, this is vintage Randy foot and mouth for no [ __ ] reason. This is

completely unprovoked. It's like just just stay off [ __ ] Twitter, you know? Like let your game release without any type of controversy. Generally, I'm always like any PR is good PR for gaming, but this type of stuff actually rubs the wrong way. particularly. I doubt that that Borderlands is going to be a particularly good game because I don't know if they have the capability of building good games, but we'll see. We'll see what happens. But anyway, I just want They have a longer runway now, right? There's no no GTA coming right after. No, that's true. It's got much more of an open window and they're coming out early, so that will help them for sure. Yeah. Late September, I think, is their title. All right, last one. Phil, are you going to do a grow a garden? Yeah, I guess I guess we can quickly cover this because that's the amount of depth there is to it, but there's a Roblox game that has been on fire for quite some time. It is called Grow a Garden. You go into one of the experiences within Roblox. There's a garden there. There's some small microeconomy things you can do to improve harvest. There is a full staff

behind this game of around 12 people on Roblox that's helped the game scale. They're doing regular content updates. It's one of the games to scale the quickest on the Roblox platform, reaching 8.9 million CCU. And just for context, when we were looking at Delta Force, the average ECU was 70,000 on Steam, and we're saying 8.9 million CCU peak peak. True. So even but even if you were to look at the peak of Delta Force, it's nowhere close to that. Yeah. Uh even look at the baseline here, you're looking at 2 million baseline CCU. Yeah. I think that's insanity. Yeah. It's between like 1.2 and 2 million baseline or something like the scale. The scale is just unheard of. Now, what do you take away from this game? I don't know. I don't think there is anything to take away. It's It's usual. Roblox can do this. They can show up and spike a game, do something viral, but can't monetize. Hard to build sustainable DAU over, you know, except outside of a few games. I

don't know what else can you take away from this. What do you mean you can't monetize? You you you can absolutely monetize. Yeah, a Roblox game is monetized like crazy. The average revenue per user is extremely limited. Okay, so in terms of the metrics, but in the way that they do monetize, they are not just doing cosmetic monetization. You can do pay to win [ __ ] loot boxes, go. You can do battle passes, you can do UGC, you can do rewarded video. Now you I mean I don't think we have access to see monetization per game. Of course not. They don't. Of course they don't have that because they don't want that because you'll see that this pump and dump [ __ ] doesn't really make them all that much money. It's just more CCU. It's more like vanity metrics of of users. Casual, right? Yeah. This is like total hyper casual [ __ ] you know? The interesting thing in this game is the way that they did the random seed and mutation system, which is getting people really really excited. Also, the fact that it's an offline and AFK game. So

the reason why it's so high on CCU and it directly incentivizes leaving the app open at all times. Same things like Rust or Banana. You remember Banana Steam. This is how they charts. It's them hacking the charts for discovery purposes because then it looks like there's more people playing than there actually is. But they also created this like random seed system. So, like if you're working on a Farmville game, you should probably look at this because it's got some interesting ways of driving verality through a random seed and mutation system. So, I think that's the lesson you can take for mobile. I like it, Adam. That's smart. I didn't know that. That's good. Crafting, Adam. Adam, moral of the story, moral of the story and tell Ethan to put bots inside of his so bots. Yeah, mutations and bots. Got it. All right, that wraps it up for this week. We will see you next week. You did it. You made it to the end of the episode. As a fan of the show, it would help us out if you'd subscribe and leave us a review on the podcast service of

your choice. Those stars and likes, well, small action on your part mean a lot to us and help to grow the show. More importantly, are you a member of the Deconstructor of Fun Slack group? If you have 5 years or more of games industry experience, go to deconstructorofund.com/slack and apply to join. Join the games industry best professional community filled with peers always willing to lend a hand. Or subscribe to our newsletter to get all the latest insights from the deconstructor of fun content creators. Thanks for listening.